It's official now – we are both homesick!  We're so happy to be heading home and have even managed to drive a little longer today so we'll be home one day early.  But we've had a lot to look back on fondly this past week.

We spent four days in Michigan with hubby's cousin Annie.  

She so generously opened her home to us and we used it as a base of operations to visit with both sides of Bill's family.  We visited with some maternal cousins and aunts:

On Saturday night, Annie had a huge get-together.  Her Dad (Bill's uncle) had 8 kids and each of those kids has at least four.  Many of them were there and it was a fun, noisy, chaotic party!  It's been so fun to watch hubby with these wonderful cousins who are as close to him as siblings.

On Monday we headed up to Spring Harbor to visit with another cousin and drooled over the beautiful vacation homes.  I picked mine out!

Then we kept on north to Mackinac Island.  To those of you not familiar with it, the island is accessible only by ferry and no motorized vehicles are allowed on the island – only horses and bicycles.

We were assured by our tour guide that they do allow the fire department to have real fire trucks!

That night we spent a lovely night at a beautiful lakeside cabin generously loaned to us by Bill's cousins.  We awoke the next morning to a gorgeous harvest moon setting over the lake.

Next on our stop was a wonderful visit with Bill's sister just north of Chicago.  We were able to help our great-nephew Caleb celebrate his first birthday in style:

And visit the Jelly Belly plant:

As much fun as we've had, we're so excited to be headed west and toward home!  We did officially find the Middle of the Nowhere smack dab in the middle of South Dakota (no offense to you South Dakotians out there!).  It just seemed that for hours and hours the road was straight, with no curves and no change in scenery.  Of course, we did make the obligatory stops at the Corn Palace and Wall Drug's giant dinosaur!

Not as much knitting being accomplished because hubby is getting weary of driving and is asking me to help out.  I'm not sure if I'll complete my third shawl, but I've definitely made headway.  I'll be having a lace blocking party when I get home!